President Obama has an idea the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, would have found interesting. Obama believes voting should be mandatory — that everyone must vote regardless of whether or not they know who or what they are voting for. “Other countries have mandatory voting,” he said, and, yes, throughout history nations have instituted mandatory voting, although most of them were dictatorships in which voters were required to vote for the guy requiring them to vote. In Africa and Latin America, for example, dictators are continually re-elected with 99.9 percent of the vote, and voter turnout is huge.
We can guess at the president’s reasons for mandatory voting, especially since it comes in the wake of his (unconstitutionally) granting legal status to 5 million illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico and Latin America, who — should they gain citizenship — will overwhelmingly vote for Democrats (in the 2012 election Republicans lost the Hispanic vote by 44 percent!). Actually, mandatory voting will reduce the need for prospective voters to prove they’re citizens. It would make voter ID requirements seem burdensome and unnecessary, and therefore they would be weakened, if not ended.
It’s a safe bet the president believes most new people forced into the voting booth will vote Democratic. And he’s probably right. Given the choice of voting for a party that wants to increase the power of government, or voting for a party that wants to shrink it, most voters who previously hadn’t even bothered to join the political process, or were prevented from joining because they weren’t citizens, will prefer the big-government party, figuring it will do more for them than the small-government party.
Returning us to Mr. Madison, who actually had a healthy distrust of people voting in democratic elections because democratic rule means majority rule, which often meant tyrannical rule — “Tyranny of the Majority” the Founders called it — in which democratic majorities elected officials who promised to do their bidding, even if what was good for them was not always good for minorities, or the state or nation.
Thus Madison created a Republic in which elected officials, with two-year terms in the House, and (especially) six-year terms in the Senate, have some immunity from the will of popular majorities, and can balance what majorities wanted with what benefits the people as a whole.
In sum, Madison’s Republic makes it harder for majorities to get what they want, and what they mostly want today is government benefits, which are paid for by taxpayers, who, today, are becoming a minority (barely 50 percent of Americans pay income taxes).
Coincidentally, most taxpayers don’t need mandatory voting because they already vote in elections, and — since they are looking to protect themselves from big government — they tend to vote Republican.
